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Cambodia's vultures are facing a high risk of extinction and have seen a 50 percent decline in number since 2003, conservationist groups said in a joint statement on Monday. "Only 121 of the birds were recorded in this year's national census, the lowest number on record since 2003," said the joint statement released by Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), BirdLife International, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Angkor Center for Conservation of Biodiversity. "Recent reviews indicate that poisoning is the major threat to the vulture population in Cambodia," the statement said.

Not so long ago, on a drive down a rural road in Minnesota you’d often see an American kestrel (Falco sparverius) perched on a power line, watching for a dragonfly or small rodent to pass beneath. If you were really lucky, you’d spot this smallest member of the falcon family flapping its wings in its unusual hovering flight as it watched for prey. Such sights are becoming increasingly rare. These handsome little raptors, about the size of a mourning dove, are suffering a long-term and widespread population decline.

The red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) was once a very common woodpecker. In the mid-1800s, John James Audubon stated that the red-headed woodpecker was the most common woodpecker in North America. He called them semi-domesticated because they weren’t afraid of people. He stated that they were camp robbers and also a pest. According to the Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count data, between the 1950s and the year 2010, the population of red-headed woodpeckers dropped dramatically. Over 80 percent of the population died out in just over 50 years.

High exposure to pesticides as a result of living near farmers’ fields appears to increase the risk of giving birth to a baby with “abnormalities” by about 9 per cent, according to new research. Researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, compared 500,000 birth records for people born in the San Joaquin Valley between 1997 and 2011 and levels of pesticides used in the area. The average use of pesticides over that period was about 975kg for each 2.6sq km area per year.

Worldwide occurrences of honey bee colony losses have raised concerns about bee health and the sustainability of pollination-dependent crops. While multiple causal factors have been identified, seed coating with insecticides of the neonicotinoid family has been the focus of much discussion and research. Nonetheless, few studies have investigated the impacts of these insecticides under field conditions or in commercial beekeeping operations.

The widespread use of neonicotinoid insecticides in recent years has led to increasing environmental concern, including impacts to avian populations. In Texas and across their range, Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) habitat frequently overlaps cultivated cropland protected by neonicotinoids.

THE latest results from the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) show that everything might not be as it seems, with many of our woodland birds in trouble. The BBS report, published by the British Trust for Ornithology in partnership with the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and the RSPB shows trends for 111 species in the UK and makes interesting reading. Being a woodland bird in the UK is a bit of a rollercoaster ride, depending on which species you are.

The RSPB has flagged up concerns about the decline of hen harriers (Circus cyaneus) in Northern Ireland, with just 46 breeding pairs left in the region, a fall of 22 per cent since 2010 when there were 59. According to BirdWatch Ireland in 2015 there were an estimated 108-157 breeding pairs in the Republic, a decline of 8.7 per cent since a 2010 survey which recorded 128-172 pairs.

The South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department’s annual survey released Friday morning shows a 45 percent decline statewide in the number of pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) per mile compared to 2016. The results showed a statewide pheasants-per-mile index of 1.68, down from last year’s index of 3.05. This year is the second-lowest pheasants-per-mile index since 1979, slightly above 2013’s dismal preseason index of 1.52. That year, an estimated 979,000 pheasants were harvested, one of three years since 1991 that hunters in South Dakota did not harvest more than 1 million pheasants.